Backplanes often include several application-specific ports through which data is input and/or output. The application-specific ports are operable to mate with application specific connectors. When a backplane is tested, pin to pin interconnects between the backplanes are manually verified using DC methods. During backplane testing, a technician probes one or more pins in the one or more application-specific ports. When a backplane is complex, there may be thousands of manual test points and pairs of test points to be individually probed during a complete testing of the complex backplane. Thus, DC testing of a backplane is labor intensive and expensive.
When a backplane is a high speed differential backplane, the manual DC probing does not identify and/or isolate impedance problems with the backplane. In that case, DC testing of a backplane is inadequate to indicate a potential problem with the backplane.